uld help her, threw back the
casement. Below, in the black night, a row of torches shook and
trembled, like little planets, in the distance.

Katharine Howard held her cousin's head upon her knees. She had seen him
thus a hundred times and had no fear of him. For thus in his cups, and
fevered as he was with ague that he had had since a child, he was always
amenable to her voice though all else in the world enraged him. So that,
if she could keep the Lady Rochford still, she might well win him out
through the door at which he came in.

And, first, when he moved to come to his knees, she whispered--

'Lie down, lie down,' and he set one elbow on to the carpet and lay over
on his side, then on his back. She took his head again on to her lap,
and with soft motions reached to take the dagger from his hand. He
yielded it up and gazed upwards into her face.

'Kat!' he said, and she answered--

'Aye!'

There came from very far the sound of a horn.

'When you can stand,' she said, 'you must get you gone.'

'I have sold farms to get you gowns,' he answered.

'And then we came to Court,' she said, 'to grow great.'

He passed his left hand once more over his eyes with a gesture of
ineffable weariness, but his other arm that was extended, she knelt
upon.

'Now we are great,' she said.

He muttered, 'I wooed thee in an apple orchard. Let us go back to
Lincolnshire.'

'Why, we will talk of it in the morning,' she said. 'It is very late.'

Her brain throbbed with the pulsing blood. She was set to get him gone
before the young Poins could call men to her door. It was maddeningly
strange to think that none hitherto had come. Maybe Culpepper had struck
him dead with his knife, or he lay without fainting. This black enigma,
calling for haste that she dare not show, filled all the shadows of that
shadowy room.

'It is very late,' she said, 'you must get you gone. It was compacted
between us that ever you would get you gone early.'

'Aye, I would not have thee shamed,' he said. He spoke upwards, slowly
and luxuriously, his head so softly pillowed, his eyes gazing at the
ceiling. He had never been so easy in two years past. 'I remember that
was the occasion of our pact. I did wooe thee in an apple orchard to the
grunting of hogs.'

'Get you gone,' she said; 'buy me a favour against the morning.'

'Why,' he said, 'I am a very rich lord. I have lands in Kent now. I will
buy thee such a gown ... such a gown.... The hogs gr